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A huge Sperm Whale suddenly appeared in front of the remotely operated vehicle (ROV), called Hercules and a bunch of lucky people got a lifetime surprise when the whale gets recorded into their live broadcast.

Yesterday, the mouth-watering video broadcast has been recorded by the bunch of ocean exploring researchers from the Nautilus Live expedition, which was an exploration of sea floor methane seeps. The encounter occurred on the coast of Louisiana, in the Gulf of Mexico, over 598 meters under the sea level, and the sperm whale seems very curious after seeing the ROV.

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The animal started to roam around the ROV as it is looking an odd mechanical thing in the sea, Sperm whale is one of the world largest predators with teeth and almost 70 feet long in size. They are classified and red listed as “Vulnerable” species on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and also being protected by an International Whaling Commission moratorium.

Susan Poulton, an expedition spokeswoman who is on-board the E/V Nautilus ship with the scientists, said,

“It was such an amazing moment”,”There was a lot of cheering on the ship.” ,” No one knows what drew the sperm whale’s interest; it could have been Hercules’ glowing lights in the dark sea, acoustic pulses from a sonar instrument monitoring the bubbles or simply a chance encounter. Sperm whales use their massive heads to send out pulses of sound that help the whale hunt and communicate. The crew turned off the sonar instrument, which sends out a fan-shaped acoustic signal, as soon as the whale approached,”

It was the first time for the Nautilus crew members to spot a whale in their underwater research program. Since 2010, they were exploring the Mediterranean and Gulf of Mexico and no one has spotted a sperm whale till now. The crew members contacted onshore researchers to find out whether the whale was female or male and they estimated the size of whale about 35 feet long.

The ship was almost closer to the source of a Deepwater Horizon spill and the sampling of methane was conducted by ROV Hercules, that helps the scientists to understand how bacteria consumes methane underwater.

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About John W Arthur

John is the head of our IT Security team and he writes about Security, IT news on The Next Digit. He was the Employee of the Year 2013 for his selfless support and efficiently setting up the whole security infrastructure. He also occasionally writes on "IT Sec Pro" Print Media of Sweden. All posts by John